Viewpoints

Jim Dollinger
Sunday, June 22, 2008

What makes sense is getting rid of Wagoner, not further reducing the size or scope of the corporation. He has lost over $50 Billion in shareholder value. I truly can't understand why he is still there unless there is some form of master plan we are all ignorant of. The head of any other company would have been tossed long ago. Where is the accountability? Who is ever held responsible? GM cannot survive without there being some degree of holding people to blame and clearly outlining when someone is at fault.

John DeLorean, former Group Vice President...

"There were and are men in positions of power at GM who do not know the business they are running."

"Our inability to compete with the foreign manufacturers is more due to management failure than anything else."

"After a short time, the isolated executives would find their markets taken away by competitors who were attuned to the wants and needs of the public and who were exercising their franchises to operate responsibly."

H Ross Perot, former Board member...

Gorilla dust is his expression for the perennially optimistic statements made by Smith and other company executives. Scooping up some imaginary dirt and tossing it in the air, Perot says, "When gorillas fight, they throw dust in the air to distract one another."

"Where I come from, when you see a snake, you kill it. At GM the first thing you do is form a committee on snakes, next you hire a consultant, then you talk about it for a year."

Jerry York, former Board member...

"I have not found an environment in the board room that is very receptive to probing beyond the materials provided by management."

Elmer Johnson, former Vice Chairman...

"I had concluded that GM's problems were not just the result of ten years of bad luck but of thirty years of bad corporate culture in which the middle and upper management had become so self assured, so complacent, so arrogant, that they thought they were beyond the reach of the competition and even the external environment."